Sunday!!! Sermon!! Read! Or don’t.:(
John 12:1-8; Philippians 3:4b-14; Psalm 126; Isaiah 43:16-21
Well we’re getting really close to end of Lent. Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, and that means Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are right on the corner, as is Easter. And you know what? I should be a lot more excited for it than I am. Because I’m finding myself caught up in all the details of what has to get done – what planning needs to happen, who is assigned what job, what I’m going to preach about – and I think I’m completely missing the point.
Our lesson from Philippians and I really didn’t get along this week. And I think it’s because I’m not paying attention to the right things. Paul spends most of the letter to the Philippians telling the church that there is really only one thing that matters – that Christ came, died, and was raised to new life. He talks about how Jesus is the personification of humility, how he gave up everything he had to become human and die on a cross. And then he reminds us of something very simple: Our glory is not in ourselves, but in Jesus Christ.
And this is where our second lesson begins: “If anyone else thinks he has reason to put confidence in [himself], I have more.” And then Paul gives us his resume from when he was a Pharisee: he was born a Jew from the tribe of Benjamin, a precise follower of God’s law, so passionate about his beliefs that he persecuted Christians, and completely without fault according to the law. But all of those things he used to think so highly of he considers nothing compared to knowing Jesus Christ. In fact, he goes so far as to call all of those achievements fit for the dung heap.
Paul is seeking after one thing, and one thing only – to know the power of Christ’s resurrection and that it is Jesus who is all that really matters. In our gospel lesson, Mary has a similar expression. Consistently through Gospel, Mary is the one who “gets it”. Whenever Jesus is around, she is focused on him, not on other things. In Luke 10, Jesus visits Mary and Martha, and while Mary sits at Jesus’ feet to listen to him teach, Martha is working hard to get everything ready. When she tries to get Jesus to tell Mary to help, he says “Martha you are worried about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
In our gospel for today, Martha is serving dinner, but Mary take a near-ridiculously-expensive jar of perfume, one that cost as much as a whole year’s wages, and anoints Jesus feet with it. Judas on the other hand, couldn’t see past the details, and says to Jesus, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?” He was too focused on details to see what was happening around him. So Jesus says, “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”
The disciples likely didn’t quite understand what Jesus meant by all this. Even at this point, they didn’t understand that Jesus was heading towards Jerusalem to die on the cross. And even when Jesus told them flat out that’s what he was doing, they tried to discourage him from that path. It’s almost like they didn’t want to see the big picture – didn’t want to see what was really important – and kept focusing on the little things.
In the reading from Isaiah, God is telling us that he is doing a new thing in us – something new so that we, as God’s people, might proclaim his praise. The Psalm has the same idea – we’re thanking God for what he has done for us and anticipating him doing more. But the point is always that we are focused on God.
I’ve talked a lot this Lenten season about the difference between following God’s rules and following God. It’s a difference I often struggle with, as I’m sure we all do. The details of life are all well and good, but sometimes we just need to take a step back from that and look to Christ – maybe even give him the most precious, valuable thing we have like Mary did.
It is my hope for all of us in these last two weeks before Easter that we not get so caught up in the details of what happens around this season that we forget Jesus in it. If we do lose Jesus – forget that he died and rose again for our sins – well, then we may as well just stay home and watch bowling.